Kind: Articles
Traditional long form content: a post with an explicit title and body.
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OMG Child Pr0n (or is it?)
What a mess this is turning into! I am of course referring to the UK-wide internet censorship of a Wikipedia page (the one about the Scorpions album, Virgin Killer - if that last link doesn't work, you're among those affected).
The thinking is, according to the Internet Watch Foundation, that the cover of the 1976 album … -
Environmental Awareness and Yes, I'm Still Busy
The Technium's just hosted a seminar on environmental awareness. Walking past the conference room a few minutes ago, I noticed that the folks running the event had managed to leave running the projector and all of the lights, despite the fact that it had ended some time ago. Ah, the irony.
Went to a céilidh at … -
LiveJournal-to-Google Reader v2.0
I've just (finally) gotten around to releasing a brand new version of my LiveJournal-to-Google Reader proxy server, which makes it possible to easily read your LiveJournal friends' "friends only" posts in your Google Reader account (or whatever other RSS reader you use that doesn't normally make this easy).
I've announced the new version on the new … -
Congratulations Alec & Suz
Alec and Suz's wedding was this weekend, and I went along to the wedding reception on Saturday evening, along with Claire, Jimmy, Liz and Simon. We turned up stylishly early, and took advantage of the bar while we waited for anybody else we knew to appear (okay, so there was the bride and groom, of …
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Grief (Interactive Fiction)
It's not as spectacular as Violet, but I've just enjoyed playing Grief, another IF Comp 2008 entry. Download the .z8 file (which you can play in Windows Frotz or your favourite Z-Machine).
Play it a few times to see a few of the different endings: if only you could have done things differently... but perhaps things … -
Violet (Interactive Fiction)
It's been a long while, but I've got some more interactive fiction to recommend: Violet, by Jeremy Freese. It's got all of the usual things I like in a modern piece of interactive fiction: a believable, detailed world that you can really feel like you're a part of, and which "carries on" around you; a …
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How to be Mono-Friendly
Freaksexual just wrote a fantastic blog post (as usual) instructing monogamous people "How to be Poly-Friendly". It's an excellent little post about the kinds of faux pas it's easy to make without even thinking about it, and while it's very obviously targetted at monogamous folk who have polyamourous friends or lovers, I couldn't help but …
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Two Recent Dreams
Summaries of two dreams I've had recently:
The Parrot
Faye was moving out of her family home and into a flat of her own, and as it was small, she wasn't able to provide sufficient space for all of her many critters, so she rehomed a parrot (a Scarlet Macaw, although I'm pretty sure she only has … -
Mi Parolas Esperanton! (Apenaŭ)
Antaŭ pluraj semajnoj, mi havis sonĝo. Mi sonĝis de mi parolas Esperanton. Neniu rajtas diri mi ne postiras mia sonĝoj, ĉar mi komencis lerni la lingvo!
(sed mi bezonis vortaron por skribis jenon)
Translation of my very rough-and-ready multilingual work, above: Several weeks ago, I had a dream. I dreamt that I spoke Esperanto. Nobody may say … -
Toilets With Urinals? Toilets Without Urinals?
Remember this picture I took at BiCon this year?
Looks like as a concept it's going to become not-so-strange, according to a report in Metro: University students open trans-gender toilets. -
Interview Sarah Palin
Remember about four-and-a-bit years ago, I downloaded Dadadodo, which I described at the time as a "word disassociator?" The program itself is a Markov chain generator/randomiser that works on sentence structures: in other words, given some text (speeches, poetry, blog posts, whatever - other kinds have been demonstrated to work on things like music) it …
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Games I Have Been Playing Recently
There's a couple of computer games I've played recently that I thought I'd share with you so that you, too, can go play them and waste all your free time (hopefully you've got more free time than I do to be wasted!).
RUCKINGENUR II
Free (as in beer) to download and play - download it here. Windows … -
Pictures From PolyDay 2008
For the benefit of people I promised pictures to, here's some of the photos I took at PolyDay 2008, the post-Dossie Poly Meal, and generally during Claire and I's trip to London this weekend. There are more photos I'll share in due course, little doubt, and my write-up of what PolyDay was like, which I …
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SSL Client Certificate Authentication In Ruby On Rails
I've been playing with using client-side SSL certificates (installed into your web browser) as a means to authenticate against a Ruby on Rails-powered application. This subject is geeky and of limited interest even to the people who read this blog (with the possible exception of Ruth, who may find herself doing exactly this as part …
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Ruth's Blog Post
That one over there.
It fills me with warm fuzziness. After a weekend away doing all the things she mentioned (as well as a number of unmentionable things in The British Museum), I've got a pile of e-mail and blog entries to get through this lunchtime, so I shan't waste time blogging myself. Instead, I'll just …